


Paper-thin Daydream

by flutter



Category: The Pretender
Genre: Daydreaming, Dreams, Gen, Mother Complex, Mother-Son Relationship, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-09
Updated: 2005-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flutter/pseuds/flutter





	Paper-thin Daydream

lashes of red hair and a deep, dimpled smile cross through Jarod’s weary mind. Even in the loose daydream he rewinds his thoughts and pauses on the hair, stops on the smile. Where her eyes should have been was an obscuring fog; the shape of her face was blurred. Jarod can feel himself in his mind—a miniscule-sized image of himself—actively trying to push through layers of the dozing haze and his brain’s illustration of a memory. Trying to push through until it rips like paper under the pressure of his hands, the edges of his nails.   
  
Jarod’s heart jumps with each mental thrust, each forced jab, as he beats at the blank face of his mother. He feels the power behind the thoughts that race from the back of his head to the front. It’s his mother behind that unfocused image. He knows it is. If he can just push through—if he can just hook his nails into the layer of the memory and peel it back, he knows he’ll see her. He’ll see her face. She’ll be whole and real.  
  
When he stops breathing long enough, Jarod can hear her voice. It’s tinny and soft, but it’s definitely feminine, definitely calling to him. And he stretches—he can actually feel his whole body stretch—towards the voice. Towards his mother.   
  
Legs, torso, arms, neck—they all stretch out in fine, paper thin versions of themselves. He feels his body stretch and his arms reach and flatten until they wriggle elsewhere, until he loses track of his edges.   
  
He is spread thin, drooping over the corners of his mind and he waits. He waits for his torso. He waits for his legs. And when they pull and tighten enough to slip and wiggle through the fissure his arms made, he waits for them to expand, to shift into their proper forms.   
  
Light floods through his eyelids and from what he can see behind them, all glows red. He turns an ear towards where he imagines his mother stands. He tries to hear her move, tries to hear the moment her voice breaks with joy as she says his name.   
  
He hears no movement, no voice.   
  
Jarod squeezes his eyelids tightly together with a wish before he slowly opens them. He wants his years of waiting to see his mother’s face to be something to savor. He wants _her_ years of waiting to see _his_ face to be something to savor—to be a reason for her to smile that brilliant, wide-mouthed smile at him; the smile that has helped him through many dark nights.   
  
When the tiny Jarod inside his mind opens his eyes there’s nothing but light; nothing more than the end of a daydream.


End file.
